This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Emergency funding announced for DR Congo amid new Ebola outbreak

$40 million in emergency funding has been provided by donors to help communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), shortly after authorities there confirmed a fresh outbreak of Ebola disease.

Confirmation that it has surfaced in Mbandaka, in the northwestern province of Équateur, comes as health authorities and the UN continue to fight a nearly two-year-old Ebola outbreak on the other side of the vast country, the nation’s worst ever.

To date, there are more than 2,200 people who have lost their lives to the virus in eastern DRC since the outbreak started in the provinces of Ituri, North-Kivu and South-Kivu.

The funding from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), builds on an earlier $30 million provided for underfunded emergencies.

It will strengthen existing health services and enable follow-up support for Ebola survivors.

Authorities will also be able to establish community-based surveillance, alert and rapid response systems, to prevent the deadly infection from spreading.

In addition to Ebola, the DRC is battling a mix of health and humanitarian crises, including the world’s largest measles outbreak, massive internal displacement and insecurity, and COVID-19.

‘Once-in-a-generation’ chance to reset our link to world’s oceans: UN chief

Everyone has a “once-in-a-generation” chance to correct our relationship with the natural world, including the world’s seas and oceans, António Guterres said on Monday.

In his message for World Oceans Day, on 8 June, the UN Secretary-General urged all countries to “build back better” after the COVID-19 pandemic – which he said was a “sharp reminder” of how people and nature are connected.

“We rely on the oceans for food, livelihoods, transport, and trade”, Mr. Guterres insisted, before warning that there are abundant dangers to low-lying nations, coastal cities and communities today from rising sea levels linked to climate change.

The oceans are becoming more polluted and acidic too, he warned, which was putting marine biodiversity and essential food chains in jeopardy.

Record levels of fish consumption show need for sustainable management: FAO

To the slippery issue of the world’s fish stocks finally, which the UN Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO) insists need more protection urgently, with more than one in three species currently being caught at unsustainable levels.

According to the FAO, people worldwide eat an average of 20.5 kilogrammes of fish per year – which is a record - and this is set to increase this decade.

FAO Director-General QU Dongyu, called for more governments to ensure that aquaculture played a more central role in their food security and nutrition strategies, particularly because fish are among the healthiest foods on the planet and some of the least impactful on the environment.

The agency chief added that there was also growing evidence that although effective fisheries management results in robust fish stocks, failure to implement sustainable measures threatens food security and people’s livelihoods. In the FAO’s latest State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) report, data indicates that nearly four in five fish caught come from sustainable stocks.

Catches of all kinds of tuna reached their highest level, at about 7.9 million tonnes in 2018, and two-thirds of these stocks are now fished at sustainable levels - a 10 per cent increase in just two years.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.